Saccharine
by MeltingSunlight
Summary: Carolyn never could resist temptation. CarolynXAngelique femslash, M for language
1. Chapter 1

Carolyn woke up only by chance as the shadow fell across her bedroom doorway. It was nearing two thirty in the morning and it took a moment or two for her mind to adjust to the sudden consciousness and longer for her eyes the gloom of her bedroom. She turned over under her covers and faced her room, focusing her eyes on the strip of moonlight that pierced between her curtains and illuminated her floor. She knew the same light that time tomorrow would bring another transformation. She closed her eyes hoping to fall asleep again and gather that little bit more energy for what was to come, sighing softly. She lay for a few moments until a sound caught her attention. The more she focused her supernatural hearing on it, the more pronounced it seemed to become and her eyes snapped back open.

_Breathing_.

She slowly turned her eyes to look towards her door way and felt a mixture of light dread and slightly less negative unresolved emotional issues hit her as her gaze fell upon Angelique's outlined form which stood in tight jeans and a shoulder-less red top watching her from the doorway. Her clothes were strangely casual compared to what Carolyn had been used to seeing her in.

"Hello Carolyn." The woman said simply.

The girl threw her covers back and got quickly to her feet, backing away from the door towards the window on the opposite side of the room. "What the fuck?" She breathed as Angelique closed the door behind her and leaned against it casually as if she shouldn't be two years dead.

"Don't worry, Fido." She said holding her hands up. "I come in peace."

Carolyn glared at her "Don't call me that."

Angelique shrugged her exposed shoulders. "Whatever you want."

"Have you come for round two, or what?" Carolyn said icily.

The witch looked unperturbed. "No. Unless you wanted to."

Carolyn turned her back on her. "Then do one." She said, hoping it might work and that Angelique might leave before stupid mixed up teen feelings tried to drag her into further conversation with the woman who had tried to kill her. After a few minutes of quiet between the two, Carolyn closed her eyes in resigned realisation that that wasn't going to happen and turned back around.

Gathering herself, she picked up a glass paper weight from her desk and tossed it from hand to hand as she paced the width of her new room. The rest of the huge house had been badly burned but the blaze had been controlled before the old wing had been consumed and the Collins family had had to move into it despite that it smelled like dust and parchment and years. In her stubbornness though, Carolyn's bedroom smelled of cinnamon and roses from the incense that drove her mother up the wall.

"What do you want from me?" She snapped, since her company wasn't leaving.

Angelique raised an eyebrow. "Who rattled your cage?"

The young girl gave the witch a sarcastic smile. "Who let you out of yours?"

The corner of Angelique's lips twitched into a half smile as she gazed out past the half drawn curtains and at the near full moon. "A little rich coming from... You." She said pointedly.

Carolyn smirked. "As is the turn of phrase coming from..." She put the glass ball back down on the table with a weighty thud. "you."

Angelique smiled sweetly. "Nothing wrong with being rich is there?"

Carolyn shrugged. "Wouldn't know. You and yours made sure of that." She looked at the woman who was so comfortably leaning against her closed door.

"So. What _do_ you want?"

Angelique let out a long breath and walked in languid paces across the room to sit down in the replacement wicker bowl seat the girl had been set on which hung from the ceiling, spinning slowly left and then back to the right before Carolyn left her peripherals.

"Just thought I'd drop in and see how you were... Hows the lycanthropy going for you?"

"Great. How's being a hell-bent murderous witch going for you?"

Angelique waved her hand dismissively. "Well, you know, business is business murdering is murdering, same old."

Carolyn looked at her half disgusted, half darkly amused. "Well now thats out of the way, give me one good reason I shouldn't call the police or worse, Elizabeth, and alert them to the fact that their favourite genocidal, raving psychopath is back from the grave?"

Angelique rolled her eyes. "Please, don't exaggerate- I was never in a grave."

Carolyn glared at her as she felt herself fall into the pit of lonely resentment she'd dug over the last two years, aware that it was numbing all the appropriate caution she knew should be taking. "For fucks sake, you tired to kill us all then shattered like a china doll, your body disappeared without a trace and now you're back here like nothing happened? The only time we really spoke was when I was attempting to rip your throat out so please will you just tell me what you really want?!"

Angelique bit her lip. "You're not scared of me at all are you?"

Carolyn was beginning to feel slightly hysterical. "Scared of you? Angelique, I barely _know_ you, and from what I _do_ know there's little to be afraid _of_. I mean, what're you gonna do, slap me with a fish?"

"I could rip your heart out." The witch replied bluntly.

Carolyn reached behind her and pulled a bottle of vodka out from behind a book end on her window sill, opening it with her teeth and drinking it without a glass. "If you can find it sweetie." She growled, only too aware but not letting on that Angelique had found it quite a while ago.

Angelique smirked. "I might take you up on that one day. Happy birthday for last week by the way."

Carolyn shot her a look. "Yeah. Thanks. 18 and going nowhere. Now back to the point- I saw you die."

Angelique frowned. "No, that's not want you saw at all."

Carolyn took another drink, not getting any closer to the woman. "Alright, I saw your body get smashed to bits then impaled on a chandelier, so what, what's the difference?"

Angelique looked at her scornfully. "Honey, people don't tend to shatter like bone china, do they?"

The teenager threw her hands up in exasperation. "People don't _tend_ to turn into wolves or talk to their dead mothers deranged ghost. But there seem to be exceptions for them. I don't care what you say, I saw you die that night, I saw it." She hissed, aware that in this room she was not as isolated as she was in her last and that waking Everyone would be easy if she raised her voice.

"I'm not stupid, Carolyn. It was a spur of the moment plan and it was going to be me against all of you, of course I wasn't going to turn up and take those odds in person. The person you saw 'die' that night wasn't me, she was just a shell, a conjured replica for me to safely control from elsewhere. Witchcraft is a beautiful thing. When that body died, the magic wore off, it disappeared, I woke up."

Angelique watched Carolyn's face as the girl processed what she'd said, scanning every word intensely for any holes or contradictions or signals that it might be a lie. She found none.

"Okay. So assuming that's true, you're telling me that you went through all that, took two years holiday and then just popped back here to like, check up on me as if you didn't try to kill me and my family? This is the last time I'm gonna ask before I start inanely screaming- what. Do. You. Want?"

Angelique smiled deviously and stood up from her seat, walking slowly over to Carolyn. "Screaming? I thought you weren't scared of me."

The girl watched the witches approach carefully. "Just answer the question."

Angelique stopped walking only after she knew she was in the werwolf's personal space and then plucked the bottle of vodka from Carolyn's hand and took a drink from it before setting it down resolutely behind the elaborate book end it was previously hidden behind. "You really want to know why I came back here?"

Carolyn remained silent but looked Angelique in the eye with the same stubbornness that Julia had told her would one day get her killed.

The witch stared back for a few seconds and then suddenly leaned in and pressed one long and eerily soft kiss against Carolyn's lips. By the time Carolyn finally opened her eyes, Angelique was long gone into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N- Thanks to the guest review who pointed out the age thing, it did say four months rather than years, but I had meant to change it to two years anyway and forgot- I've cleared it all up now :)**

* * *

"I heard Carolyn talking to her self about Ang-"

Carolyn punched the little shit in the stomach before he could get his last words out. David fell on the floor with an 'oof' and immediately began to bleat for Victoria like the baby he was. Carolyn decided to save herself the trouble and sent herself to her room before her mother even made her appearance. She stalked past Victoria who sidestepped her gracefully and up the stairs, stomping up them two at a time just to make a point to anyone listening.

She slammed her bedroom door behind her and leaned against it heavily.

_She'd leaned against the door._

Carolyn flinched away from the wooden rectangle as if it was on fire. She sighed and headed for her alcohol stash. She pulled out her vodka from behind its usual bookend and unashamedly drank all that was left in it.

"Carolyn."

The eighteen year old whirled around and thanked her lucky stars it was only Julia that had caught her drinking.

She coughed a little. "Yeah...?"

The red head's eyes flickered down to the bottle in Carolyn's hand and then back up to her face. "Is that vodka?"

_If fucking _Julia_ has a go at me for drinking I'll flip._ "Yeah..."

"Do you have any left?"

Carolyn gave her a look that said no.

Julia sighed. "Oh well worth a try. Elizabeth says your grounded."

"Well I say fuck off."

Julia rolled her eyes. "Charming." She squinted. "Have you got something on your lip?"

Carolyn turned and looked in the little mirror she used for make up that was stuck to her wall. There was a small smudge of red lipstick across her bottom lip that was definitely too much of a ballsy shade even for her. She stared at it for a moment before looking slowly down at the bottle in her hands. The same shade of lipstick was visible across the top of the bottle and her tummy fluttered as she realised who the last person to drink from it had been.

_I have Angelique's lipstick on my lips... Again._ She wiped it quickly away.

Julia coughed pointedly. "Carolyn?"

"What?" The teen said absentmindedly.

Julia sighed. "I said do you want to eat while you can?"

It took a moment for Carolyn to work out what the psychiatrist was talking about. "Oh. I'm not hungry."

Julia held her hands up and turned to leave. There was definitely something different about her since she'd come back.

"Julia?"

The woman looked expectantly over her shoulder through a wave of bright orange hair.

Carolyn looked at the floor. "Do you think Angelique is evil?"

Julia snorted. "_Was_." She said as she walked away towards the kitchen in the hopes of finding some wine.

Carolyn stared after her. "Yeah... Was." She said to herself with a sigh. She turned to the little bin beside her bookcase and went to throw the empty bottle in it but faltered before she let go. With one last look at the lipstick on the clear glass, Carolyn put the empty bottle back behind her bookend. With her back to the wall, she sank to the floor and looked listlessly at her feet.

She hadn't had any sleep since Angelique showed up and with her transformation due within the hour she should probably be trying to get some now but she knew it would be fruitless. Carolyn wasn't sure what got to her most- that Angelique was alive, that she'd showed up and kissed her, or that she had liked it. She sighed.

_Maybe I'm just losing my mind._

There was a sharp pain down her jaw and she winced as she waited for it to recede. She guessed it was starting already. She heaved herself up and traipsed over to her bed, falling on it unceremoniously whilst still clutching at the side of her face. Toothache was always the first sign it was starting, her teeth all waiting to elongate and sharpen in the blur of horror and pain that she was forced to endure every month at the whim of the moon. It wasn't in Carolyn's nature to be scared of anything but the pain was her exception.

"I wonder what Angelique's scared of.." She mused aloud to herself.

"You might well ask."

Carolyn sat up too fast and her vision swirled with purple and sliver.

"Is this going to become a fucking regular thing with you?!" She hissed at the woman stood at the end of her bed.

Angelique grinned. "If you like."

Carolyn winced as a new pain cracked through her leg and reached down to hold onto it. "Do you think it could be a regular thing some other time? Im a little busy."

Angelique strolled across her room and sat on the end of Carolyn's bed. "Not too keen to change?"

Carolyn ignored her and focused on massaging the pain in her leg, no matter how pointless it was.

"What _are_ you doing?"

Carolyn looked at her indignantly. "What do you mean, what am _I_ doing? What are _you_ doing?"

Angelique pointed at Carolyn's leg. "Whatever it is that I'm doing its a lot less pointless that that."

"Don't like answering questions do you?"

The witch laughed quietly. "I don't mind answering questions as long as they're what you really want to know."

Carolyn grimaced as the pain began to spread to her other leg and gradually up her side. "Fine, here's one I'd like to know- how good is your witchcraft for pain relief?" Her voice grew more and more strained as the pain became less easy to ignore.

Angelique considered. "I cant stop it." She said softly, looking Carolyn briefly in the eye. "I can't stop you from changing, not this time."

Carolyn became suddenly aware that she was already too far gone for Angelique to safely be there.

_Not that I care._

She closed her eyes as the light started to hurt her eyes. "You should really go." She breathed.

Angelique reached out and ran her fingers lightly through Carolyn's blonde hair. "I can make you sleep." She said thoughtfully.

Carolyn decided as pain consumed her entirely that now was probably the best time to drop the attitude and take Angelique up on the offer but as she opened her mouth to speak all that came out was a quiet whimper and with a pleading look, she curled her burning body into a foetal position to further hide her face from the light.

Barnabas often said that Angelique's curse was that she couldn't love and for a long time Carolyn had believed it. But as the young woman leaned over her and murmured something Carolyn didn't understand close to her ear and she felt the pain and in fact, everything else begin to fade from around her Carolyn had to admit that it did feel like an act of compassion.

"Sleep." Angelique whispered. And the world disappeared.

* * *

Elizabeth was stood looking out of the same window of which the empty vodka bottle was hidden behind its book end on when Carolyn finally woke up. The evening sun lit the room in balmy shades of gold and amber and yet Elizabeth's face didn't reflect any of the warmth from it's surroundings through her chiselled expression of worry. Carolyn lay for a long moment staring at the ceiling wondering what was going on before she even registered the woman was there and once she had realised her company she made no attempt to get her attention.

_What the hell happened?_ She thought to herself as the fog began to clear from her head.

"Carolyn?"

_Great_.. "..Yeah?"

Elizabeth turned to lean over her and stroked Carolyn's hair in a way which made her cringe away. "Oh my god, _what_?" She said irritably, moving her head away.

Elizabeth looked vaguely confused, "Carolyn, you've been asleep for two days, what happened, we were all so worried about you?"

Carolyn frowned slowly. "I have?" She did feel like she'd been asleep a while. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Well god knows we tried," muttered Julia as she walked into the room without knocking, a full glass of cider in one hand and a small folder of papers in the other.

Carolyn and her mother both turned to look at her at the same time as the orange-haired woman crossed the room languidly and handed the papers to Elizabeth. The elder Collins took a moment to scan over them before peering over the top to look back at her daughter. "We tried just about everything," she said, "We even resorted to a few of Barnabas' more... Interesting methods, but you slept through them all- thank you, Julia-" She added as she handed the papers back, "Witchcraft, Barnabas said. Then again, thats also what he said when we introduced him to fast food and televisions and cameras so I didn't hold out much hope."

_Shit_.

Julia snorted in the background as she headed to the door. "Yeah, and it's not like Angelique is back from the dead," The woman focussed her eyes on Carolyn over her shoulder. "Is it?"

Carolyn swallowed hard and looked away, not enjoying the coincidence of her name being brought up.

..._Shit_... Carolyn found herself remembering all too quickly why she had slept for days. Julia took a gulp of cider, still looking at Carolyn and then left the room without another word.

Elizabeth gave Julia a strange look as she watched her go and addressed Carolyn with a deep breath. "Well, dinner will be ready in about 3 hours, its Victoria's birthday and Barnabas insisted we have a big meal so try and make it down if you can."

Carolyn nodded vaguely in Elizabeth's direction as her mind raced and the woman left her room in the same manner as Julia had.

_I barely felt a thing._ She thought to herself as she swung her legs over the edge of her bed and padded over to her open door. She noted how easy her movement was- usually after her transformation she was slow-moving, every muscle ached and complained and her mind was languid but she felt perfectly refreshed.

The bathroom was empty to her relief and she slid the bolt across and locked herself inside. Glancing at herself in the mirror over the sink on the way to the shower, she sighed. Her hair was a mess, not that that was anything particularly new, but on the whole, she looked just the same as usual.

"Witchcraft." She muttered to herself as she thought about what Elizabeth had said about Barnabas' suspicions. She thought of Angelique. She had been so close to moving on.

With a level of resignation usually reserved for placating David she turned on the shower, pulling her shirt up over her head, then her bra, and then her jeans. She stepped under the warm water and ran her fingers through her hair until it was soaked through and reached for her shampoo. Picking it up, she rolled her eyes as she felt that it was empty and placed it down where it had been to scan her other options. She found a smaller bottle of Julia's shampoo and went with that instead- she knew Julia would be unlikely to notice. She reconsidered that assumption when the very strong smell of strawberry and almonds filled the room and clung to her hair and hoped that Julia had gone to the pub or just plain passed out somewhere so she wouldn't catch her by smell.

Lathering her hair with as little as she could afford, Carolyn quickly washed the shampoo out of her long hair, running her fingers back through the ends to get rid of any knots that she found. It was another half an hour before she finally turned off the water and stepped back out of the shower to face the world. Wrapping a bright red towel around her, Carolyn wrung out her hair as much as she could before making her way back to the privacy of her room. She got dressed into a simple black hoodie and short- too short as Elizabeth always pointed out- denim sorts, not bothering with tying her damp hair back. She was about to leave her room when a small, crisp, square of white on her pillow caught her attention. Guessing it was just another one of Davids jokes she strode over to it and snatched it up, regarding it with poorly veiled contempt. It was not however, one of Davids.

Calligraphic writing spelled out neat little words to form one sentence which made Carolyn's eyes narrow, even though deep down there was a tiny part of her that was glad of the opportunity it represented.

_The docks are always a nice place to talk in the evenings._

It was unsigned but it didn't need to be. She knew who it was from.

Growling to herself, she stuffed the note into her pocket and left her room, skipping the stairs two at a time and came within inches of the door without being seen when she heard her name.

"Carolyn."

Carolyn rolled her eyes. So close. She turned to see David standing with his arms dangling by his sides staring at her expectantly.

"What?" She snapped.

"Where are you going?" He said sulkily. "You're grounded."

Carolyn made a face and stuck her finger up at him, leaving the house without explanation.

She could hear him calling for Elizabeth as she crunched out of the Collins' drive way past the construction workers and vans that were working on the burned half of the house and towards freedom.

_I wonder if Angelique is still living around here_. She thought as the path turned into the trees. _Must be I suppose, manages to appear at such short bloody notice. _

Carolyn cast her eyes down to where she was putting her feet incase she stepped on glass in her thin soled converses. Bottles frequently found their way onto their road and were subsequently driven over, smashed, and strewn all over the gravel, lying in wait of unsuspecting thinly soled people like tiny feet land mines. Julia always denied all responsibility for their appearance, but everyone blamed her nevertheless- she was, after all, the resident alcoholic.

It took her twenty minutes to walk down to the docks, stopping at a little corner shop to buy a coffee which she mostly drank on the way. It was about 7pm when she sat down cross-legged on the end of the wooden jetty furthest away from the few people that were around with a nice view of the water and the little boats which were moored to their posts for the night. She set her coffee down on the floor next to her and stared out into space, listening to the seagulls shriek at each other as they circled over head.

"Well, well, sleeping beauty finally emerges."

Carolyn didn't look behind her when she heard the blonde's voice. "It's not _my_ fault." She said pointedly.

To her surprise, Angelique sat down on the wooden planks next to her. She was wearing a dark purple hoodie much like Carolyn's with her hood up and black jeans, from behind they just looked like two teenagers. Though Carolyn supposed that was the point, it wasn't like Angelique could walk around in public as she used to.

"Maybe not. Its not easy putting someone to sleep quickly, effectively _and_ for a short period of time." The woman said looking at Carolyn.

Carolyn didn't look back. "Why did you put me to sleep?" She said after a while, her eyes not leaving the water below her.

"You were in pain." Angelique said obviously.

Carolyn raised her eyes to look at Angeliques. "When did you start caring?"

"When did you?" The witch answered with an air of touché.

Carolyn looked away again wordlessly. When _had_ she started caring? Angelique didn't look away, waiting for an answer Carolyn couldn't give.

"I don't know." She said finally.

Angelique coiled one of the eighteen year olds now dry stray curls around her little finger absent-mindedly and Carolyn made a concerted effort to conceal anything which might give away her mild pleasure as she felt the soft tugging sensation.

"Carolyn?"

The teenager didn't answer.

The second time was softer. "Carolyn?"

Carolyn turned her head reluctantly towards the other woman and was pleasantly surprised by the feeling of lips pressed against her own. She made a soft noise of surprise and closed her eyes, reaching up to put her fingers through the ends of Angelique's light blonde hair which hung out of her hoodie down by her neck. Angelique kissed her a lot longer than she had the first time and when she broke away Carolyn had tears in her eyes.

"What are you trying to do to me?" She whispered sadly.

Angelique regarded her thoughtfully. "Lesson one; if you keep your emotions bridled, they hinder your ability. If you let them go as often as possible as much as possible, you'll be stronger in your endeavours."

Carolyn's brow furrowed. "Lesson one in what?"

Angelique leaned in and kissed her gently one last time before standing up in the fading light of the evening. "Magic, Carolyn." She said simply, before walking back up the wooden jetty and out of Carolyn's sight.


End file.
